Gen.
Walter Sharp, former commander of U.S. Forces-Korea, raised more than a few
eyebrows recently when he predicted, “There will be instability in North Korea
that, I believe, will lead to the collapse of North Korea much sooner than many
of us think.” We should hope and pray that Sharp’s prediction is accurate,
because the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is the most backward,
brutal and beastly regime on earth today.

The DPRK is guilty of “a wide array of crimes against
humanity” and “unspeakable atrocities,” as a special United Nations panel
concluded in a sobering report.
“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not
have any parallel in the contemporary world,” according to the 372-page
document.

The government-sponsored crimes include “persecution on
political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of
populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of
knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

The report also finds in North Korea a “complete denial of
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the
rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association,” noting
that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are being held in
prison camps.

Indeed, the DPRK is consigned to the lowest tier—the bottom
eight—on a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) ranking. Pyongyang “tightly controls all
religious activity and perpetuates an extreme cult of personality venerating
the Kim family as a pseudo-reli­gion,” according to USCIRF. “Individuals
engaged in clandestine religious activ­ity are arrested, tortured, imprisoned
and sometimes executed. Thousands of religious believers and their families are
imprisoned in penal labor camps.”

Yet it could be argued that religious liberty is the least
of the North Korean people’s concern. After all, North Korea is a place where
citizens are required to donate food rations to the armed forces, where people
subsist on a diet that relies on “wild foods”—Pyongyang’s Orwellian euphemism
for tree bark and grass—during times of scarcity, where children are being
orphaned by mass-starvation. And yet, the Kim Dynasty diverts one-third of
its GDP to the armed forces, tests long-range rockets and nuclear
bombs, and buys new tanks. North Korea has 200 more tanks today than in 2008.

If only those were the worst of Kim’s abuses of power.

The North Korean regime, according to the UN panel, is
guilty of “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment.” It engages
in systemic sexual violence, including rape, forced abortions and infanticide.
Newborns are regularly killed by drowning and suffocation, the UN
reports. Many forced abortions are a function of Pyongyang’s retrograde
desire to preserve a “pure Korean race,” according to the UN. “The concept of
‘pure Korean blood’ remains in the DPRK psyche,” the UN
report explains, quoting a former North Korean official. “Having a
child who is not ‘100 percent’ Korean makes a woman ‘less than human.’”

Recognizingthe “many parallels” between North Korea and the Nazi regime, Michael
Kirby, chairman of the UN panel, concedes, “I never thought that in my lifetime
it would be part of my duty to bring revelations of a similar kind.”

Pointing to the nature and volume of Pyongyang’s crimes, the UN condemns “the
inadequacy of the response of the international community.” (Of course, in
doing so, it is condemning itself.) “The United Nations must ensure that those
most responsible for the crimes against humanity committed in the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea are held accountable. Options to achieve this end
include a Security Council referral of the situation to the International
Criminal Court (ICC) or the establishment of an ad hoc tribunal by the United
Nations.”

A Nuremburg-style tribunal or ICC referral is certainly warranted, but the
creaking machinery of the UN Security Council—where Beijing routinely shields Pyongyang
from international condemnation and punitive sanctions—prevents any such
action. And even if the UN Security Council somehow agreed to haul North Korean
leaders before the ICC tribunal, the ICC has no power to apprehend the accused.
That task would be left to civilization’s first responder and last line of
defense—the U.S. military—and that would be an act of war.

No one of sound mind wants another war in Korea. The toll from the 1950-53
Korean War should give us pause: 38,000 Americans, 103,000 South Koreans,
316,000 North Koreans, 422,000 Chinese and 2 million civilians killed during
three years of conventional warfare. Six decades later, we have the specter of
a mushroom cloud hanging over the sequel.

Korean War II would give new meaning to the term “Pyrrhic
victory.” The fact that it would end the Kim Dynasty is of little comfort given
the costs. Kim’s arsenal includes 13,600 artillery pieces/rocket-launch
systems, 4,100 tanks, 730 combat aircraft and hundreds of missiles. Gen. Leon
LaPorte, former commander of U.S. Forces-Korea, noted in 2005 that every third
round fired by North Korea would be a chemical weapon. Seoul would bear the
brunt of the blow. With its 10.5 million residents, Seoul’s outer suburbs sit
just 25 miles from the DMZ—a sobering thought given that 70 percent of the
North’s ground forces are deployed within 60 miles of the border zone. That
explains why experts talk of “World War I levels” of casualties.

What can Americans and their government do?

Preach from the bully
pulpit“A little less détente,” President Reagan once counseled with regard to another
evil regime, “and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of
armored divisions.”

In other words, policymakers should draw attention—relentlessly—to the North
Korean regime’s illegitimacy, brutality and assault on basic human rights. The
State Department’s recent decisionto cite Kim Jong Un for widespread human-rights abuses and “repressive policies
toward his own people” is a step in the right direction. “Under Kim Jong Un,
North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions
of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor and torture,”
Acting Undersecretary of Treasury Adam Szubin said in July.

The purpose here is not be to shame Pyongyang—for the
shameless cannot be shamed—but rather to challenge its enablers. Toward that
end, the White House should shame and name regimes that support the monsters in
Pyongyang (China and Russia),
shine a light on the daily plight of the North Korean people, point out
the vast
differences between North and South Korea, and offer a platform to the
DPRK’s escapees. Pray for
transformationIf, as Asia expert Minxin Pei observes, “No modern authoritarian dynastic
regime has succeeded in passing power to the third generation,” then the Kim
Dynasty isn’t long for this world. Perhaps our prayers can push it over the
edge.

“The real business of your life as a saved soul,” Oswald Chambers wrote a
century ago, “is intercessory prayer.” In some mysterious way,
intercession works. It pays to recall that Moses,Mordecai,Peterand Paulwere all intercessors.

We can pray that Kim’s regime falls like a rotten tree
rather than explodes like a time bomb. We can pray for mercy to soothe the
brutalized people of Kim’s vast prison state. And we can pray for wisdom to
guide our leaders. Leading a superpower with a conscience is a thankless,
endless exercise in searching for the least-bad option, which is why we need tooffer“petitions, prayers and intercession” for
“all those in authority” that they might make the right
decisions—so that we might live in peace.

Prepare in order to preventPyongyang’s assault on religious liberty, human rights and humanity itself
isn’t just about ideals. It’s also about interests. Regimes that have no
respect for religion—regimes like the DPRK—see no limits on their power. Since
they believe nothing is above the state, they can rationalize everything they
do in the name of the state, the fatherland, the revolution, the “Dear Leader.”
That’s a terrifying notion, given the arsenal Kim controls.

“We’re within an inch of war almost every day in that part
of the world,” then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said of the Korean Peninsula
in 2012. He wasn’t exaggerating: In 2010, North Korea shelled a South Korean island
and torpedoed a South Korean warship. In 2012, North Korea conducted two
long-range missile tests under the guise of satellite launches. In 2013, Kim detonated
a nuclear bomb, proclaimed the 1953 armistice “dead” and threatened nuclear
strikes against the U.S. In 2015, Beijing reported that North Korea had
manufactured 20 nuclear warheads. And this year, Pyongyang detonated another
nuke; test-fired an intermediate-range missile that could bring Guam and
Alaska’s westernmost islands in range; testeda submarine-launched ballistic missile; and just this month fired medium-range
missiles into waters north of Japan.

The only thing that has maintained the fragile peace in Korea since 1953 is
America’s deterrent strength. Yet the U.S. defense budget has fallen from 4.6
percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.1 percent today—and if current projections hold, to
just 2.7 percent of GDP in the next decade. The last time America
invested less than 3 percent in defense was, ominously, 1940. This is the best
way to invite the very worst of possibilities: what Churchill called
“temptations to a trial of strength.”

Policymakers should recognize that a well-equipped military is not a liability
to cut but an asset to nurture. And people of faith should recognize that
the purpose of deterrent military strength is, by definition, to
deter war, not wage it. As President Washington explained, “There is
nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.”

A policy of patient preparedness—bracing for the worst,
getting through another day, another year, another term without another war—is
how U.S. presidents have measured success in Korea for 63 years. It’s a low
bar, to be sure. But given what Korean War II would look like, it’s a worthy
goal.

Still, in light of Pyongyang’s beastly crimes, one wonders
how much longer the friendless North Korean people can hold on.